Sunday, January 16, 2011

The teen's need for new pokemon hats continues. This time, we captured drifloon in hat form.

This is one of his fan graphics, showing the pokemon itself.

It turns out that it's not easy to find a vibrant grapey purple worsted yarn. I custom ordered it from Coulrophobia, and the yarn she sent was perfect. I didn't want to run short, of course, so I ordered 2 skeins. One skein was more than enough so I have an extra skein of purple yarn!

I've been participating in a stripey sock Knit-a-long, which helped guide my choice of gift socks this winter. This is the pair for my #1man, yarn gifted and then knit up afterwards. The yarn is Vivace by Sweet Paprika in the colourway Cinnamon Bark from the Loopy Ewe. I used a Bordhi-style riverbed heel, but with modifications. Her heel increases are enourmous and take up a large section of the foot, eating up huge quantities of yarn. This version had less increases, and increased every other row. I'm really quite happy with the heel. It turned out nifty, wrapping neatly around the heel when worn. The eye-of-partridge patterning has tactile and visual appeal, and hopefully compensates for the lack of nylon content in this 100% merino yarn.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

I have been turning heels this weekend. Two heels have been successfully turned, the third will hopefully be completed tonight.

The browns socks are for my husband. I did the classic knitter gifting stunt where I gave him the skeins of yarn, and a promise to make them into socks soon. The yarn is Vivace by Sweet Paprika in the colourway Cinnamon Bark. I ordered this yarn on the 21st of Dec from the Loopy Ewe and it arrived--amazingly--on the 23rd.

The green yarn also came from Loopy in that same order. It is Bugga! in the colourway Juniper Hairstreak. The pattern is Aragorn. I have long toyed with creating a pattern where the cables twined down the front of the sock and then split in the middle for Bordhi-style sky-sock increases. This pattern did all the designing work for me.

I've been using the Hiya Hiya 9" circulars for this sock. While the tiny needles take some getting used to, I find the knitting quite flies once I've adjusted. The needles are appropriate for the leg because the pattern controls the number of rows on the leg. Now that the heel is turned, I will be putting the sock onto a holder until I've knit the second sock to the same point. Then I will knit the feet together on a large circular, in order to ensure both feet are the same length.

The teen in my life said, "Mom, I want you to make me some hats." I said, "I love making hats!" Turns out, he wants complicated hats. The skitty hat took me days, working one step per day. The ears tried my patience in a huge way--there may have been cussing--but they turned out adorable. I even had to bust out my rusty embroidery skills for the eyes.

Secondly, socks for my dad. Also not mailed. Also out of Knitpicks Felici sportweight. This took the entire 2 skeins. The contrast toe and heels were out of necessity to ensure these fit a large man's foot.

As a bonus, there was a wee pair of booties for a coworker's baby who will be arriving any day now. These were crafted out of the mystery mini-skeinlets I bought at a local yarn store. The pompoms are adorable, but I fully expect the momma will just cut them off, because they really do make the booties fiddly.

About Me

I'm a Canadian librarian living in the U.S. I knit, sew, geocache, cook and entertain myself in other random ways. I have various homes on the web, this one happens to be mostly knitting, with a smattering of other domestic pursuits tossed in when needed.
Email me: KnitikaGC AT gmail DOT com